Visuality for Architects: Architectural Creativity and Modern Theories of Perception and Imagination

By Branko Mitrovic

What is more important in architectural works—their form, shape, and color, or the meanings and symbolism that can be associated with them? Can aesthetic judgments of architecture be independent of the stories one can tell about buildings? Do non-architects perceive buildings in the same way as do architects?

For the greater part of the twentieth century it was common to respond to these and similar questions by relying on psychological theories asserting there is no innocent eye, that we think only in language, and that human visuality results from preexisting, conceptual knowledge. Dramatic breakthroughs in philosophy and psychology over the past two decades, however, have shown us that human visuality functions for the most part independently of conceptual thinking and language.

This book examines the ways in which new theories of human visuality create a different understanding of architectural design, practice, and education. This new understanding coincides with and supports formalist approaches to architecture that have become influential in recent years as a result of the digital revolution in architectural design.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: May 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9780813933962

Book preview

VISUALITY FOR ARCHITECTS

VISUALITY FOR ARCHITECTS

Architectural Creativity and Modern Theories of Perception and Imagination

BRANKO MITROVI

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS       CHARLOTTESVILLE AND LONDON

University of Virginia Press

© 2013 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First published 2013

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Mitrovi , Branko.

Visuality for architects : architectural creativity and modern theories of perception and imagination / Branko Mitrovi .

   pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8139-3378-8 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8139-3379-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-0-8139-3396-2 (e-book)

1. Architecture—Philosophy. 2. Visual perception—Psychological aspects. I. Title.

NA2500.M595 2013

720.1—dc23

2012044555

Figures 2, 10–13, and 18 by the author. Technical preparation of figures 3–6, 15, and 16 by Carley Lockie. Technical preparation of figures 7–9 by Arnika Blount. All other illustrations used by permission of the designer.

In memoriam Ivek Grabovac

I urge you to open your eyes.

—LE CORBUSIER

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1  Architecture: Form or Story

2  The Eye Is Innocent, but the Brain Can Be a Liar

3  Perspective and Its Discontents

4  Perceiving and Thinking about Space

5  The Return of the Visual

Conclusion

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

In 2002 I was present at the opening of an exhibition at an East Coast architectural institution. Six large exposition rooms were made available to six groups of young architects, who presented a series of visual experiments that explored combinations of spatial elements and colors. The exhibition was thoughtfully put together; the experiments consisted of surfaces in various colors combined at different angles. One could move up, down, and between multicolored planes and platforms and perceive unexpected spatial relationships of forms and colors. Having had the chance to see the exhibition before the opening, I noted that this kind of work was not aligned with the mainstream architectural production of the day. The contemporary trend was to suppress visual and formal concerns and concentrate on the stories that can be told about architectural works. I was therefore curious to hear the reaction of the prominent architectural critic whom the hosts invited to open the exhibition. I could sense that a storm was brewing.

And I was right. The critic came, dashed through the exposition rooms without much interest, and then started his talk, holding the brief two-page exhibition catalog in his hand. He was calm and his words were pronounced politely—yet his assault was damning in every possible sense. These young architects were wasting their time, he argued, because they concentrated on shapes, spaces, and colors, while architecture can only be a reflection of its social and cultural role—the important topic unmentioned in the catalog. The only way to approach architecture, he explained, is through words. One can only think in words; since everything is text, architects can only make texts. Nevertheless, these young architects had written very little in their catalog, a fact that particularly disturbed him. Ultimately, the role of the architect is that of a public intellectual and words are the only medium architects can engage in, he argued. In the little that they had written, these young architects seemed to suggest that they could engage with architecture using media that are not verbal—an absurd assumption that lacks awareness of contemporary architectural theory. This disparaging talk went on for about half an hour; its gloomy and condemning tone was in sharp contrast with the cheerful colors of the installations lurking behind the door. The people who gathered for the opening respectfully listened to the famous critic and then went to enjoy the exhibition. Everyone but the critic, I had the impression, liked it.

By that time I had worked long enough in architectural academia to be able to predict the critic’s reaction. I knew that the expectation of hearing a story dominated studio reviews to the point that it often killed the critics’ ability to engage with architecture’s visual properties. I had seen studio reviews in which students would pin up pages of typed text on the wall, rather than drawings, because they were taught in theory classes that everything is a text. I used to deplore the trend, but at the time I also misunderstood how it came about. My explanation in those days was that the trend originated from the tendency of architecture schools to hire those graduates who are more skillful with words than those who are confident with things visual. As a result, generation after generation, architectural academia gradually painted itself in a corner where only words mattered. As I now understand, this explanation was simplistic and wrong. The antiformalism that dominates much of architectural academia today has a complex history and diverse intellectual roots. At the time I failed to grasp this. (In fact, I doubt that even the critic I’ve just mentioned, who was so passionately involved in the contemporary theoretical debates of the time, was aware of the full picture of what he was preaching.) In any case, I knew that some aspects of the critic’s worldview could not be right. For instance, the view that all thinking is verbal could not be true, since there existed a substantial body of psychological research on visual imagination and mental rotation—that is, thought processes independent of verbal thinking (see chap. 4 of this book). I also knew about the latest articulations of the formalist position in aesthetics by Nick Zangwill (see chap. 5). The critic who opened the exhibition would find it hard to respond to Zangwill’s arguments—but few people working in architectural theory read the specialist journals on analytic aesthetics in which Zangwill’s early papers were published. It was only in later years, as I came to study the important breakthroughs in the study of human visuality that have occurred in recent decades, that I also gradually became aware of the roots of the antiformalism that dominates contemporary architectural theory. In the process, I also learned that architectural antiformalism is based on philosophical and psychological assumptions that have in the meantime become obsolete in the fields they originated from. As time went by, I also gradually learned about an entire generation of young architects who embraced formalist approach to design; some of their works now illustrate this book.

Rudolf Arnheim in his Dynamics of Architectural Form described the formal exhilaration that he often found in architecture. At the same time, he reported how puzzled he was to observe in the practitioners of architecture, professionals, teachers, and students, a kind of malaise, a disillusionment that made them neglect the active study of design or even denounce it as a frivolous diversion from the serious social obligations of the architect.¹ The expectation that one must justify architectural designs by referring to something outside architecture, that formal and visual qualities are of secondary importance in architecture, has not just accidentally happened to dominate contemporary thinking about architecture. It has its own history and originates in a number of philosophical and psychological positions that became influential in the 1960s. While these positions have in the meantime ceased to be credible in philosophy and psychology, they have remained enshrined as dogmas in the writings of architects, architectural theorists, and historians. (Arguably, the same problem exists in many other fields of the humanities.) In other words, much of contemporary architectural thinking is based on assumptions that have lost their credibility in the disciplines from which they were originally imported into architectural theory—such as the view that all thinking is verbal, that there is no innocent eye, that perception is inseparable from our beliefs, that everything is text. Nevertheless, these views have been preserved, as fossilized sacrosanct dogmas, in contemporary architectural thinking. They continue to serve as justification for the disregard of visual and formal considerations in architectural design. And they have had a remarkably negative impact on the visual qualities of our built environment: for a number of decades, generations of architects have been taught to ignore visual and formal issues in their designs and to concentrate on the meanings, stories, and symbolism that can be told about architectural works. It is consequently no wonder that our cities look the way they do.

The intention of this book is to help overcome the current situation. It is not meant to be a scholarly work. Rather, it has a mission to perform. It was written in order to undermine the positions that have hugely contributed to the formal pollution of our visual environment. If it is to achieve its purpose, the book should reach as wide a public of architects, architecture students, and academics as possible, and it should convey its message clearly. I have therefore made every effort to make it popular and I have yielded to scholarly impulses only in one detail: knowing that I am presenting material that has been little addressed in recent writings on architectural theory, it was necessary to footnote properly and direct interested readers to the current bibliography on this topic.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My gratitude must first go to the painter Ivek Grabovac, who prepared me for the study of architecture when I was eighteen. Ivek taught me not only to draw but also to look and see shapes as such. The awareness of the autonomy of the visual-spatial realm that I received in his drawing classes decided much of my later intellectual development. After architecture I studied philosophy, and owing to my awareness of things visual I simply could not take seriously the linguistic turn and the idea that all thinking is verbal. Similarly, in the early 1990s, when I began my doctoral studies at Penn, I had to realize that deconstruction and phenomenology, the two dominant paradigms in then-contemporary architectural theory, were programmatically anti-visual and could not satisfy my theoretical concerns.

Since 2000, the old dogmas of the linguistic turn, cultural constructivism, and antirealism have lost their credibility as a result of psychological and philosophical research on human thinking and visuality. Many friends, colleagues, and students have contributed to this book by discussing these matters with me, as well as the content and organization of this book. I owe special gratitude to Mike Austin, Lars Blunck, Adrian von Buttlar, David Chaplin, Jovan Djeri , Peter McPherson, Cameron Moore, Kristof Nyírí, Tony van Raat, Predrag Šidjanin, Milan Šijakov, Radovan Štuli , Bojan Tepav evi , Dejan Todorovi , Ian Verstegen, Richard Woodfield, and Nick Zangwill. Many of these people work at the University of Novi Sad, and I am grateful to Nadja Kurtovi -Foli for having